


And His Clock Hit Zero

by littlewerewolftori13



Category: James Bond (Craig movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Don’t think about the intricacies of how time passes in this fic please, M/M, Ridiculous Happenings, Romantic Soulmates, possible multi chapter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-17
Updated: 2017-10-17
Packaged: 2019-01-18 13:19:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,795
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12388872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/littlewerewolftori13/pseuds/littlewerewolftori13
Summary: In a lazy Soulmate!AU where at the age of 16 children are given the choice to have a clock that counts down to the second they meet their soulmate, Q meets his soulmate in a... less than anticipated manner.





	And His Clock Hit Zero

His mother had always said that when the time came, when his clock hit zero, he would know exactly what to do. It had buoyed him through accepting his clock, and through endless days of loneliness, anxiety, and watching the clock slowly tick down towards zero.

It didn't always stay the same, of course. As he made choices in his life, the clock would jump, sometimes a few hours, sometimes several years towards or farther away from the moment when he would meet... them. Whoever they were. 

But now, staring horrified as the numbers neared an hour before he met his destined... he admitted to himself that it had been a mistake to let his love struck mother talk him into getting the clock. He pardoned his own naivety because he had still been so young. How could he have known what his life would turn out to be?

He glanced quickly back up at the meeting he was supposed to be paying attention to. He knew everyone was pretending not to notice his lack of focus, and he knew that _everyone_ knew what this day was to him. It was why his second in command was trailing after him like his shadow, why he had been encouraged to have the day off to go out and find his soulmate. 

As the time got closer to the actual meeting, people were drawn together, clock or not. Q had actually come to work in hopes of not being able to follow the draw, but now that he was here, he wished that he had just stayed home. Q deliberated for a second. As his presence here was honorary at best, what was stopping him from going home? He still had time, he could definitely make it home again before the supposed destined meeting. 

With a loud scrape he pushed his chair back, standing hurriedly. “Excuse me.” He muttered tightly, gathering his things and practically running out as he felt the eyes of everyone in the meeting room follow him. He heard a call behind him, but it seemed muffled compared to the sound of his heartbeat pounding in his ears. 

He slid into an elevator behind a few others, muttering that he wanted ground floor when asked. He’d have to take a second elevator down to the garage since this elevator was on the other side of the building, but using back halls to get there was endlessly preferable than walking past the financial department. At that thought, he glanced at his watch queasily. At least his soulmate wasn’t among anyone he had encountered so far. 

He spent a brief moment wondering if he should go down to Q-branch. After all, if his soulmate was there at least it might be someone he could stand. He pushed the thought away a second later, there was no way he would stand among his technicians like some lovesick puppy, hoping someone there would take him.

The elevator let the others off a couple floors above him and he spent the rest of the ride down alone, both relieved that he was alone and worried sick that someone else would get on. He still had time. 

Once the elevator hit ground floor, he hurried through blessedly unpopulated hallways towards the elevator that would take him to the garage, only encountering one or two people who ignored him as intently as he was ignoring them. Finally, his goal came into view and he glanced at his watch, causing him to stumble unexpectedly to a stop. The timer had gone down! He was left with bare _minutes_ before he encountered his soulmate!

He scrambled for his keycard to activate the garage elevator. At least he could get inside and lock the doors until the time passed, except.. where was his keycard??? With horrifying clarity, he remembered the call he heard as he left the meeting room, clear to him in hindsight, “Q, your card!” 

He turned away from the elevator with a terrified groan. Where could he possibly go now? With less than two minutes left and no keycard, he had nowhere to go. Footsteps echoed down the silent hall he had come from and he turned and fled. 

Down one empty hall and another until he glanced at his watch and nearly fell over. Just 20 seconds left! Suddenly he heard something from the left side of the hall. Footsteps again, and this time coming quick. He had nowhere to go, but he had to go somewhere. Looking around he spotted a supply closet and darted in without a second thought. Facing the closed door, he backed slowly away as the footsteps became audible through the closed door, quickly approached... and then passed with no consequence. Q tripped over something and fell on his ass in surprise. 

“Shit!” He said, speaking his first thing aloud since he left the break room. It sounded extra loud in such a small room and he nearly laughed as relief bled into him, realizing he had escaped his fate for now. 

He held his wrist up again to glance at the clock and frowned as icy cold panic froze him in place. 10 seconds. But how could it be? It must have changed again while he hadn’t been paying attention, and now he could only watch in horror as the clock counted down the last 5 seconds. 4... 3... He looked up at the door as he realized what it was going to look like when his soulmate found him like this. 2... There was a slight clink from above him, barely heard as he watched the timer flit from one to zero. His attention was pulled up, however, as a vent grate fell into his lap, and then it was chaos as the duct system above him collapsed. 

Something _heavy_ fell across his legs, making him cry out with the unexpected pain and surprise of the moment. As he heard a grunt and realized the thing on top of him was alive and moving though, he sucked in a breath and opened his mouth to yell for help. 

He was stopped as a hand slapped across his mouth, pushing him back against the shelving behind him and silencing him for the moment. Frustrated, he opened his eyes to see what had caused this terrible conclusion to a terrible hour and was met by a pair of ice blue eyes staring right back at him. The eyes flickered down and to the right, then back up at his and slowly the hand pinning him left his mouth. It didn’t go far, instead resting on the side of his jaw, a thumb moving up and down (caressing?) his neck over his pulse point, which was becoming more rapid (fluttering?) with each pass. 

Q gaped probably unattractively at the face of the handsome man in front of him, stunned to bits and trying to catch up to the situation. As his brain tried to figure out if he was being attacked or not, his body caught up just enough to trigger fight or flight and Q’s defensive training kicked in. 

He reared back one arm and decked the man, trying to aim for the nose as best he could and using the forward momentum to jump up so he could stand. He ignored how his newly bruised legs screamed at him as he tried to look intimidating. “Who are you!” He blurted out the first question he could think of at the man groaning at his feet. As he waited for the man to stop gripping his face, he happened to glance at his right wrist, then did a double take. The watch was flashing zero. 

“Oh, shit. Oh, _shit_.” 

“The name is Bond. James Bond, if you were still wondering.” The man, _his soulmate_ , said smoothly. Q nearly melted in more ways than one as the situation became very suddenly crystal clear to him.

“I’m, uh, Q. And sorry. Uh, sorry.” Q said, reaching down an arm to help the man stand. 

The man touched his face once more, brushing over the slowly darkening area on the side of his nose just under his eye, and looked up with a chagrined grin.  
“Don’t be, you have a good jab. That’s not exactly what I expected from my first meeting with my soulmate.” When he said it, fire raced across Q’s cheeks, but he ignored the pinch of embarrassment. The man did a cursory glance of the room, then looked back at Q. “Why were you in a supply closet?”

Q scoffed. “Why were you in the vents?” He shot back with a disbelieving grin.

The man, James, grinned. “Touché.” 

As all the nonsense of the last few minutes began to settle, James raked his eyes over Q’s body, causing a different type of fire to spark in Q. James took a step closer, his expression becoming more serious as he lifted the hand back up to settle where it had been before. 

Q realized that his assessment before, caressing, was entirely correct, and this time both his eyes and his heart fluttered as Bond used the grip to tilt his head up. He used the sheer heat and mass of his body to crowd Q against the shelving unit behind him again. As his back hit, however, and Q took assessment of how he felt now that he knew this was his _soulmate_ , he realized maybe this wasn’t how he wanted his first kiss with his soulmate to go. After all, they were still in a supply closet, and they were both covered in dust because the vent system had collapsed. His legs also were really starting to ache because James had fallen a good distance on top of him, and maybe he wanted to get to know James before just kissing him. 

He brought a hand up and covered James’s mouth. Carefully placing his other hand on the one James still held to his cheek, he took a step forward and spun them so James was the one with his back to the shelves. 

“Maybe we can talk about it over coffee, yeah?” He slowly released the hand over James’s mouth, hoping he’d understand. Slowly James shifted the grip of their joined hands until he was gently holding it and smiled down at Q. 

“I would love to.” 

Q retuned the small smile with one of his own and turned away, keeping James’s hand in his. “Great, I never liked being in a closet anyways.”

Q glanced at his now blank watch, thinking back to when he had got it. His mom had been right after all, he had somehow known exactly what to do. Though she could _never_ have anticipated this exact meeting.

**Author's Note:**

> There’s the slightest possibility that I write more to go with this, maybe Bond’s POV or something mirroring their meeting in Skyfall. The ideas are there, but ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ who knows if the muse will ever take me there! Anyways, there’s maybe one or two other stories I’ll try to finish while I still have the motivation to write, but enjoy this one in the meantime!


End file.
